


[podmeta+text] NENS ramblings

by Annapods, Annaswrite (Annapods)



Category: Podfic Fandom
Genre: Accents, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Meta, Podfic, Podmeta, character voices, more or less aural not!meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 22:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14724356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annaswrite
Summary: Meta about non-English/non-standard languages and the podficcing thereof.





	1. Audio

 

 **Streaming:**[tumblr](http://annapods.tumblr.com/tagged/nensr) \- [dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eecd8jyohrb0b5f/AAAaq5H-atBAZAHOPnjCgTPea?dl=0)

 **Download:** dropbox ([mp3](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eecd8jyohrb0b5f/AAAaq5H-atBAZAHOPnjCgTPea?dl=0) \- [m4b (to come)](DBM4B))

 

 

 **Contact me:**[twitter](https://twitter.com/iamapodperson) \- [tumblr](http://annapods.tumblr.com/) \- [dreamwidth](https://annapods.dreamwidth.org/) \- email (annabelle.myrt@gmail.com)

 **Notes:** this was recorded for the “language meta” challenge of the Non-English/Non-Standard podfic summer games. Text/notes available in the next chapters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 **Addendum:** there's one point I need to amend in part 1. All in all, I still think podficcers should generally go for it more often, but I was a little too flippant about good intentions being all you need. Like, we still need to acknowledge and take into account the cultural power dynamics at play. I can't really give any advice on that, both because it's a complicated question and because I'm way too middle-class white girl to be the one to answer it, but asking someone more knowledgeable worked pretty well for me so far (by which I mostly mean tweeting about it, but hey). I'm still standing by every other point I made, though.


	2. Nostalgia

Reading fics/recording pods in new languages is such a throwback to my baby podficcer days, and I'm having nostalgia.

 

Ok, backtrack. My approach to learning languages is: if I don't have any incentive, I don't. So I trick myself into it. I take classes, I go live in foreign countries, and I do stuff I want to do – just in another language. That means reading fic, because that's my number one pasttime. It's… kind of difficult to find good fics that fit my wants in something else than English, but midterms were motivating me, so. And also, it (usually) keeps me from reading too late into the night.

Now, reading makes me want to /read/. To record. And February came around and it was time for an accent check, so I used linguee.com (I'm faking my Spanish skills so hard it's hilarious)) and did podfic for all four langages. Now I want to do more and improve, and also, I don't have the excuse of not wanting to ask for permission. So… more non-English pods. Coming soon-(ish).

 

But! This is not my first time recording in an unusual language. That's half my back catalogue on ao3, right there. I know the steps, and I'm going through them again. If this was a movie, I'd be getting flashbacks to some kind of podfic training montage where I master the «th» sound in a few weeks (condensced into 10 seconds, but with outfit swaps so that the viewer realizes it took a while) and repeats drills progressively more complex tongue-twisters and Mme Voilin (hearteyes) doing her phonology course, with my growing ao3 works count fading in and out of overlay.

… Anyway. Here are some of the similarities I noticed.

 

\- Little to no contact with the fandom outside of the authors, absolutely no idea where the party's at.

\- Compulsively checking linguee for every word you write.

\- Backslide in previously-mastered langages, brain always brings up words in the wrong language, except for when it's going non-verbal and throwing concepts at you instead of sounds. Good luck finding the word you need in the next half hour.

 

\- Accents and pronunciations getting mixed up. What are Rs. Ls. Don’t even talk to me about Ss.

\- Emotions? Inflections? è.ô?

\- New sandbox! No rules! Experiments! Fun!

\- Except in L1. Higher standards. Nothing is good enough.

\- Automatisms from English pods. Emphasis on certain words, melody, etc. Which do not transmute well. (I'm looking forward to going back to France for that. Talking with family and friends, analysing how people talk on the street. People watching, but with listening instead.)

 

\- Pride in the accomplishment, not the final product. The final product is terrible. But it's necessary training.

\- And in a few years, if you keep this up, you'll relisten to it and cringe but smile- because that would mean you've done it. It worked. And in a few more years, maybe, with more distance actually enjoying it.

 

\- This moment of slight disbelief when someone says that they liked it.

\- Being actually glad for the 'cute' accent because it means they enjoyed the pod regardless.


	3. Accents

I was listening to a podaware podcast about accents and some things in it were bothering me, so here I am, rambling about accents.  
And, to be clear, I’m not trying to open any debate or anything. It was, like 5 years ago, I haven’t even listened to the whole thing, and I’m pretty sure the hosts were speaking about their own personal insecurities and feelings rather than, you know, passing judgment on anyone. This is just me, rambling about my opinions.

  
Ok, story time. I started podficcing in… 2015, was it? After high school. I’d been reading in English for years, had good literacy, but a heavy accent. I’d just come back from a few months in the US, a few in Austria, and I was gearing up to start a university cursus that was half German, half English. So. Languages. Allll the time. In my first year, we had this phonology course. (And, the way it was explained to us, phonology is the study of sounds in a language, phonetics is the study of sounds in accents inside a language. So, different levels of zooming in, basically. In other words, we were studying RP, received pronunciation, the BBC British English). By the end of it, I kind of sounded like a friendlier version of Cassandra, from DA:I. Fast forward to the present, I just finished my third year, which I did in Canada, in Ontario. So now, I sound pretty Northern American, with some random words pronounced the RP way, and some more random words that I have no fricking idea how to pronounce. This year was a lot of “A, how do you pronounce that word?” “Well, you direct someone in the right direct direction/direction, but a movie director can also be a director, and...” “Urrrrrrhg.”  
And of course, all the while, I’ve been podficcing and experimenting like crazy with sound effects, cover art, anything I can get my hands on.  
So for me, learning to podfic and learning to speak English are inextricably intertwined. Which probably explains my rather radical opinions on the subject of accents.

  
Listening to this podcast, what really stood out to me was: it’s totally okay to have a non-native accent, you do not have to try on accents and maybe, and that might be me extrapolating too much, but: it’s better to keep your original accent rather than fail at putting on another one (both native and non-native speaker trying on native or non-native accents).

And, for several reasons, both personal and not, I’m totally against that opinion.

  
First, from what I understood, they were wary of trying because they were afraid of making anyone “cringe” or, worse, offending them. And. Let’s look into that.  
Why would it be offending? And yeah, I’m French. That’s not usually the accent people make fun of the most. But this is not making fun of, this is just trying to emulate. I’m guessing, unless the text is making fun of the character and how they speak, there is no mockery there.*  
From the perspective of a non-native listener/podficcer, hearing people trying on their accent might also encourage them to record themselves regardless of their accent. It’s all well and good to say: your accent is totally fine! But by trying it yourself, you’re actually showing them, rather than just telling them, that you want their accents in your podfics.  
Also, let’s keep in mind that anybody speaking English as a non-native language is constantly putting on an accent. Constantly more or less consciously emulating the teachers who taught them and the people around them. Pronouncing a word a certain way or another, putting the stress here or there, if only because they have the choice between the rules of their known language(s) and the new rules they’re learning. I could pronounce this new sentence the French way, too.  
And, yes, we should not strive to sound like native speakers. Both because there is no such thing as one single, unique accent that all native speakers share, and because the myth of the native speaker is pretty detrimental to learning ,and also to intercultural relations. But for us, speaking English IS trying on a whole language. In a way, there is no keeping our ‘natural accent’. In the same way that accents change as we learn, and I couldn’t go back to my accent of two years ago if I tried. I tried, it didn’t work.

 

But more than that, how can you be good at accents on the first try? Accents, like so many things in life, are a skillset. Skillsets get acquired. They do not fall from the sky. You have to learn, and train, and there’s a whole period of time where you’re just gonna be plain bad at it. Can’t do anything about it.  
Which ties in into: people, please don’t be afraid of posting bad podfics.  
Podficcers do not owe quality to anyone. That does include accents. If somebody told you your podfics weren’t good enough for them, well. The back button/skip function/delete option exist, and they should learn to use it.  
Everything in podficcing is a skill. Using the software and equipment. Acting and narrating. Sounds effects. Cover art. Html formating. Networking. Speech.  
In that speech skill, there is pitch, rhythm, intonation, emotion, emphasis, phoneme pronunciation, melody, etc. Those do vary from accent to accent, from person to person, from situation to situation. My parents, both French, sound totally different when speaking English (sound pronunciation, stress patterns, volume patterns). Podficcers, usually, sound totally different when speaking with friends compared to when speaking into their mic (lower pitch, softer voice, slower speed, less variations in volume, more articulation). And character voices share many similarities with accents (pitch, rhythm, melody). Podficcers are always playing around with their voice and altering it. Drawing a firm line between putting on voices and putting on accents in just not possible.  
Btw, as someone interested in linguistics, it’s fascinating to study why people have the accents they do. Which aspects they carry over from one language to the next and which they don’t and why. I just. Love the idea of reverse-engineering that.

But the line we were talking about, the one drawn in that podcast, wasn’t about what was an accent and what wasn’t as much as it was about how close to the ‘real accent’ someone could get. Putting aside the matter of the plurality of accents for even the smallest of regions, in most canons, there is still that high bar of the official voice. Which, no matter how hard we try, our vocal cords have limits. I cannot sound like your average cisman. Does that mean my slash podfics are trash? No. Does that mean I shouldn’t play around with the pitch of my voice? No either. Same for accents.  
This is the myth of the native speaker, right here. That says that language learners should emulate monolingual native speakers. That people should strive for that impossible perfection that doesn’t actually exist in real life, and that doesn’t reflect their experience as multilingual speakers and learners. It’s demoralizing, it’s complex inducing, and it makes someone else the judge of your progress and achievements. Basically, please, don’t do this to yourself.

My last point is: accents, even when they’re inaccurate, serve a purpose. Accents help distinguish between characters, they help recognize them. They’re character voices. (Examples.)

  
I guess what I’m trying to say is: let’s get rid of this canon-level standard for accents, just like we did for pitch or for lore in fanfic. Let’s abolish the idea that accents have to be perfect. Let’s accept the fact that we’re learning, and that learning is a process, and that demanding perfection from ourselves is just gonna stop us from ever doing anything.

 

* **Addendum:** I'd like to amend that part. All in all, I still think podficcers should generally go for it more often, but I was a little too flippant about good intentions being all you need. Like, we still need to acknowledge and take into account the cultural power dynamics at play. I can't really give any advice on that, both because it's a complicated question and because I'm way too middle-class white girl to be the one to answer it, but asking someone more knowledgeable worked pretty well for me so far (by which I mostly mean tweeting about it, but hey). I'm still standing by every other point I made, though.


End file.
